Andy Burnham speaks after being confirmed as the Labour Party’s new leader (Alamy)

4 min read1 hr

At a special party conference in central London, Burnham said: “I will work to build a new politics. The country is crying out for it. We might enjoy the point scoring against others. The public don’t.”

“How can politicians point fingers when living standards are falling and politics as a whole isn’t working for them? It infuriates them and makes them switch off.”

He added: “Let’s be honest, everybody: this is a last chance to change, and we must take it together, united together.”

After two previous attempts to become Labour leader in 2010 and then 2015, he became Labour leader unopposed after winning nominations from 369 of the party’s 403 MPs. However, he will not become Prime Minister until Monday. 

The MP for Makerfield returned to Westminster last month after a by-election victory which led to Keir Starmer’s resignation just days later.

Burnham paid tribute to Keir Starmer for transforming the party after the crushing 2019 general election and said he “put Labour back in a position to change people’s lives”.

The new Labour leader said the only way to beat the “new right” is to end factional in-fighting.

“Fighting to eradicate it and the insidious briefing culture that goes along with it will characterise my leadership,” he promised. 

“In future, when a Burnhamite walks into a bar,” he said, joking about a well-worn Westminster gag, that they will say: “Great to see you. We don’t like factional politics here.”

Burnham promised to set an “authentically” clear direction for the party, accusing his Labour predecessors of being too much like the Conservatives.

He said: “As your leader, I will set a direction that is distinctively Labour. We won’t try to out-Green the Greens or out-Reform Reform or doing what we’ve done in the past of wearing too many Tory clothes. Let me tell you, I’m quite happy that Kemi doesn’t approve of my wardrobe choices because I’m not keen on theirs either.

“From here we do it differently. We win by being us, boldly, confidently, authentically us. Labour. That’s how we win. I want people to understand the thinking behind the political direction I set so people can see the decisions we take and the reasons why.”

With mounting speculation about who will be in his Cabinet and who will be Chancellor, the Labour leader says he has made no decisions yet. 

“When I have you will see that it reflects all parts of our party, all communities and it will reflect your own place within this great place within this great party of ours,” he said. 

“A stronger, more united Labour Party building up a stronger and more united Britain.”

Burnham pledged to “help places that built our party” and accused Margaret Thatcher of stripping power from Labour’s heartlands in the 1980s. 

“Change starts with honesty. We must recognise that this generation of politicians, myself included, have failed to challenge a political culture and an economic model that simply doesn’t work well enough for ordinary people.

“Four decades of the neoliberalism that begun in the 1980s have not been kind to the places that built our party, nor to the communities across the UK, nor to the communities across the UK in rural and coastal areas.”

Burnham pledged to be a “pro-business” leader and to “re-industrialise” as he set out his vision for Britain.

“We want to give your area more power to build the council and social homes that you desperately need, more power to improve your high street, backing local businesses such as the pubs and the shops that bring them to life. 

“And make no mistake, everybody, I will be a pro-business leader of the Labour Party as I was a pro-business mayor of Greater Manchester… and as part of that more power to re-industrialise.”

Burnham has promised to be a leader for “all places” of the UK as he laid out his devolution agenda.

“We will take power back from Westminster and Whitehall and give it to the place where you live. More power over life’s essentials so you can make them work better, and more affordable for people.”

The new Labour leader said he had made mistakes throughout his political career, but promised to give this new job “his all”.

“I haven’t got everything right, and I’m sorry for when I’ve fallen short. But I’ve always given it my all and I always will.”

He added: “I won’t change. I have a style, it’s my style, I will always stay close to the ground. Close to the people. Hopefully, still in my season ticket when the new season starts.”

The use of success profiles will be scrapped under changes to civil service recruitment (Alamy)

2 min read39 min

PoliticsHome understands that there will be a new model introduced that “emphasises skills and expertise”. 

The expectation is that the move will more closely align civil service recruitment with the private sector and bring in more talent, PoliticsHome understands.

Currently, the civil service recruits using so-called “success profiles”, made up of “ability”, “technical”, “behaviours”, “strengths”, and “experience”. The civil service also has a set of defined “behaviours”, which “when demonstrated, are associated with job success”.

In an email to staff on Friday, Cabinet Secretary Antonia Romeo said: “We are going to start by scrapping success profiles, instead introducing a new model that emphasises skills and expertise – and will make further changes over the coming months.”

Romeo also said “to deliver for the public, my focus – and that of your Permanent Secretaries – has been to build a world-class civil service that is fit for the future.” The head of the civil service also referenced the Review into the organisation, performance and transformation of the permanent civil service”.

“The Review will define a clear vision for the civil service as a world-class organisation, delivering a onece-in-a-generation transformation.”

Romeo was appointed as the new Cabinet Secretary in February and is the first ever woman to hold the role. She replaced Sir Chris Wormald, who was awarded a peerage by the outgoing Prime Minister Keir Starmer earlier this week. 

The civil service’s approach to recruitment has faced criticism in recent years for its rigidity, with the Institute for Government previously recommending the replacement of success profiles in order to test “more robustly whether applicants have the skills they say they do”.

The think tank has also criticised the current approach discouraging external candidates to apply for roles in the civil service.

The Cabinet Office has been contacted for comment. 

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson was criticised for collaborating with reality star Gemma Collins in a social media video in May (Alamy)

3 min read1 hr

The Department for Education is upskilling existing staff in social media and video skills, including rolling out training to private office staff so that they can make social media content themselves when accompanying ministers on visits, rather than having to hire more people onto dedicated social media teams. 

The short training includes how to shoot pieces to camera and film using iPhones. Officials in a minister’s private office do not usually directly oversee social media communications; instead, they typically manage the minister’s time, diary, official paperwork, and departmental policy flow.

A Department for Education source said that training more officials with these skills would mean the department could “reach more of the public where they are”.

“More people are getting their news from social media than ever before,” they said.

“We’re unapologetic about reaching them in an innovative and accessible way with reliable and accurate information, whether it’s about schemes like free breakfast clubs that could ease their childcare costs, or recruitment campaigns to hire the next generation of excellent teachers. 

“We’re often criticised in the media as a government for supposedly not having effective communications. This often misses the fragmentation of audiences and the need to flood the zone on many different platforms – and often different ones to where Westminster gets its news.”

This training is part of a wider communications shake-up across government, taking place across different Whitehall departments with support from No.10 and the Cabinet Office.

The Department for Education was the most active government Instagram account behind Downing Street last month, and also posts regular updates its YouTube channel.

Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson faced backlash in May when she took part in a video collaboration with TV reality personality Gemma Collins. 

The Only Way Is Essex star, who has 2.3m Instagram followers, featured in a video where she walked into the DfE offices with the background music from film The Devil Wears Prada. The video also included a conversation between Collins and Phillipson about post-16 education and vocational courses, and was criticised by campaigners advocating for changes to the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system who argued it trivialised education during a time of “systemic failure”.

However, Phillipson dismissed the criticism as “outright snobbery and just downright unpleasant”, and the department has continued to defend the collaboration.

The department’s Instagram views are growing, and are up by 29 per cent on the previous month. Over 80 per cent of those who viewed the Collins video in the first few days were non-followers of the DfE account, with government sources believing this shows it was effective in reaching new audiences who do not usually engage with the government’s content.

Collins was not paid for the appearance, but the department has overall shifted some of its spending towards influencer marketing, having spent over £700,000 on social media influencers since 2024. According to a government source, £1 on social media reaches many more people than £1 spent on a physical billboard or magazine advert.

PoliticsHome previously reported that the Cabinet Office’s New Media Unit was being restructured to redeploy staff and resources in order to strengthen digital capabilities and expand online messaging across departments.

The reforms also reflect rising concern within the government about the spread of false or inflammatory far-right content on social media and the need to better combat it.

The New Media Unit’s work has included setting up new channels on social media networks such as Reddit, and inviting influencers to receptions in Downing Street and to participate in press conferences alongside traditional journalists.